the frames on the wall are crooked and empty
by Min Daae
Summary: So maybe they need to talk. It's not clear that Sam really wants to, though. S7.


So it started in Missouri, simple salt-and-burn of some chick who'd been prophesying the deaths of some old folks and scaring them to death. It was the teenager with the weak heart that'd brought them in, though.

Easy case, relatively simple. Except of course, the ghost had to get talkative when she turned up as they were standing over the grave. Dean would almost have preferred pissy.

"How are you still standing?" she whispered to Sam. Sam flinched, even as her fingers hovered just above his cheek. "And he doesn't know. Can't know. So you bear it all alone…"

"Sam," Dean said sharply, and Sam jerked.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, and dropped the match. The psychic ghost went up in flames. Dean stared at Sam, trying to work out how to phrase…something.

Sam brushed his hands off on his pants and straightened. "Well," he said. "That wasn't so bad. We done here?"

"What was that about?" Dean ventured, finally. "Bear what all alone?"

Sam gave Dean a look that was so innocently, charmingly baffled it had to be fake. "No idea," he said, and then headed out the door. Dean was pretty sure he had an idea. He was pretty sure he had about six.

~.~

"You know," Dean said carefully, back in the motel room. "You can talk to me about…shit. If you want."

Sam glanced sideways at him, one eyebrow up. "That's suitably vague."

Dean huffed out a breath. "If you want to talk about what's…what was going on in your head. You can. With me. I can deal with it."

"Yeah," Sam said, "Okay." He didn't sound convinced. Dean narrowed his eyes. That was the most dubious response he'd gotten to a statement since the girl he'd drunkenly told he was a Ghostbuster.

"I'm serious. You always make _me _talk about crap."

"Mmm. Different rules for older brothers," Sam said nonchalantly, and Dean scowled at him.

"I'm serious."

"If this is about what the ghost said," Sam said, shutting down his laptop without looking over, "Forget about it. All that stuff- it's over. Done. So let's just go ahead and move on, okay?"

Dean felt a slight uneasy churning feeling in his stomach, and tried to push it away. "Yeah," he said, wishing he could sound a little more like he meant it. "Yeah, okay. But if you ever want to-"

"Wasn't it _you _who said 'no chick-flick moments?'" Sam said, sounding almost irritable, and Dean shut up and mumbled something under his breath, relieved that Sam couldn't see him flush with his back turned.

~.~

A week later they were eating dinner in another motel room when Sam set down his salad and said, "It wasn't always bad. Mostly it was. You know. Okay."

Dean was completely and utterly lost. "What are you talking about?" He asked, and Sam gave him a look that was somewhere between pained and exasperated, then went back to eating his salad and didn't say another word. It took Dean another ten minutes to sort it out. And then he narrowed his eyes and said, "Wait. What?"

Sam looked up at him from his plate and raised his eyebrows. Dean tried to communicate incredulity without gaping. "'Mostly it was okay?'"

Sam shrugged one shoulder. "I mean. It's not like he was…Lucifer, I mean. It's not like…mostly he'd just talk at me. Ramble." Sam sounded so perfectly _casual. _Dean stared at him, trying to work out if Sam was serious or messing with him or _just that fucked up. _

"Ramble about what?"

Sam shrugged again. "Whatever. He helped me solve a case once. The one with the guy who'd been possessed and was trying to get re-possessed. Remember?"

Okay. Leaning toward 'messing with him.' "Seriously," he said.

"Yeah," Sam said, and had another bite of his salad. "Seriously." He paused, and looked at the lettuce with a funny expression on his face. "Does this stuff taste like they spray painted it to you?"

~.~

Dean tried bringing it up again a couple days later, in case Sam felt like taking it seriously this time. "So, um," he said. "Talking. Huh?"

Sam blinked at him for a moment, and then seemed to understand. "Wow, Dean," he said dryly. "Going back a while, aren't you."

"And you weren't?"

"Touche." Sam glanced out a window, seeming to be thinking for a moment. "…yeah. Talking. Was there a question in there?"

"What about?" Dean persisted, though he felt his stomach do a little swoop of _you don't want to know _uneasiness. Sam gave him a look, very briefly, that Dean though communicated some of the same. Then it was gone.

"Pretty much what you'd expect. Snark about you, snark about me. It's like having DVD commentary on your life, basically."

"So he didn't…" Dean wasn't sure how that sentence ended. He went with, "Get to you? I mean…other than the…obvious issue."

The words 'psychological torture' didn't really fit in his mouth.

Sam looked at him oddly for a second, and then looked away. He shifted, seeming uncomfortable. "I mean…" he trailed off. "It wasn't. I mean. He knows – _knew _me. Knew the things to say to…yeah."

"Like?" Dean said, and promptly felt like a bit of a masochist. Sam rubbed his forehead.

"Oh, I don't know. Just. Things. And stuff."

"_Sam._"

"Is this really productive?" Sam asked, voice suddenly sharp, straightening up. "Is there _really _a point to this or are you just trying to hurt yourself?"

Dean blinked. "That's not…I just think. Maybe if you talked about it you'd feel better or something?"

"You don't really believe that," Sam said, and he was kind of right. "No, Dean. I'm not going to…it's not important. Let it go."

"What is it you don't want to tell me?" Dean demanded, suddenly sure, and the flicker in Sam's eyes briefly told him he was right.

"Nothing," Sam snapped, and then headed for the door. "I'm going for a walk. Don't wait up."

~.~

Sam came back a half an hour later, just when Dean was beginning to panic. He slipped in the front door and went straight for the shower. He stank, so clearly he'd been running.

Dean hovered anxiously, not really sure what else to do.

"He liked to pretend to be you sometimes," Sam said suddenly, voice muffled through the spray but still that curiously calm tone. "And he'd just…I could never be sure. Which one was really you. Cause they both sounded right, the one talking about going to do research and the one saying he was going to put a bullet in my head at the end of the day-"

Sam's level, calm voice broke just slightly. Dean's heart broke a little more than that.

"Sammy," he said, and wasn't sure what to follow it with.

"Is this what you wanted to hear, Dean?" Sam's voice climbed again, went sharp as he shut the water off. "Is this what you wanted to know, does it make you feel better-"

"Sam," Dean tried again, and Sam cut him off with an almost rumbled, "No."

"I'm not," he said, "Putting this on you."

~.~

"So," said Dean, about a day and a half later. Sam was giving him the silent treatment. Or the nearly silent treatment. Answering direct questions only in monosyllables and blocking Dean out at every turn with his shoulders. He was uncannily good at it, and the stubborn set of his jaw suggested he wasn't giving it up anytime soon.

Fucking _Sam. _

"So," Dean said again. "Um. Was that what made it bad?" Sam's shoulders rolled back once and he didn't answer. Dean sighed. Not that easy, then. "Come on, Sam," he said. "It's just..."

Sam's shoulders twitched once, violently. "Why do you need to know?" He asked sharply.

"I need to know everything about you," Dean said automatically, without thinking about how that sounded, and oh wait. That had…kind of come out wrong. "I mean. Other than. You know what I mean."

Sam cast him a dubious look, the first direct eye contact he'd gotten since their last conversation about this. "Really."

Well, he'd already said it. At least Sam didn't seem in the mood to make fun of him right now. "Yeah," he said. "I kind of do. That's my business." He could almost hear Sam's teeth grind. "Look," he added, quickly. "I just…it just freaks me out more when you won't tell me. Makes me wonder what it is you feel like you can't say to me."

"Like you tell me everything," Sam said, a faintly sharp note of scorn in his voice, and okay, that stung.

"Yeah, well," Dean said, and stopped. "—maybe not. But you make me tell you the important things."

"Sometimes," Sam said, eyes shifting away from Dean's and shoulders tightening up again, like a wall. "Just drop it, Dean."

Dean wasn't sure if they'd taken a few steps forward or a lot of steps back.

~.~

Forward, it looked like.

In the car, staring at his hands, Sam said, "Sometimes it was nice."

Dean almost choked. He got it right away, this time, because he'd been thinking about it too, wondering what kinds of things…it'd crept into his dreams, where he would stand watching Lucifer whisper into Sam's ear that he should kill himself, kill Dean, that demon blood would make everything better…

So yeah, he knew what Sam was talking about.

Sam wasn't done, though. "I mean," he said. "Not…not most of the time. It was just…he liked to do that sometimes. I mean. Be…kind. Speak softly and tell me…" Sam trailed off. Dean felt a little sick. He forced himself to swallow.

"Uh huh?"

Sam turned his gaze sideways, pinning Dean to the other window. There was something almost brutal lurking back in his eyes. "He'd tell me that he was the only one who'd ever really loved me, and the only one I didn't have to pretend for. He told me that he'd always love me. He said he missed me, and that when I came back down he'd never let anyone hurt me again."

It took Dean a moment to find the words. Then he managed, "If you're trying to scare me off, Sam, it won't work."

Sam's eyes skipped away from his. "I'm not lying."

"I didn't say you were." Dean swallowed again, feeling like he could taste bile rising at the back of his throat. He squeezed his hands on the steering wheel. "You ever. Uh. Miss having him around?"

"No," Sam said, after a moment's pause that Dean was very, very afraid meant _yes. _

_~.~  
_

"I'm sorry," Sam said, a couple hours later when they stopped for gas. "That was a dick move."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "A little bit."

"I won't do that again."

"What's the deal with this, anyway," Dean said. "You don't trust me to know what I can and can't deal with?"

"That's not…" Sam trailed off and swiped a hand across his eyes. "That's not it."

It occurred to Dean, a ticklish feeling at the back of his mind, that once upon a time Sam had been the one to initiate touchy-feeling talking time, but that hadn't really been the case. Even after getting his soul back, Sam just didn't really…

He talked when he got mad. That was about it.

Maybe Sam didn't know how to start with this any more than Dean did. Maybe he was so used to keeping quiet that talking didn't feel normal anymore. "I should just get you drunk," he said, without really thinking about it. "You were always a talkative drunk."

"Dean," Sam said, and stopped. He sighed. "Look. I just…it's really not that important. What he said, what it was like, whatever. Can't we just focus on finishing this Leviathan thing?"

Dean took a deep breath through his nose. "Did he say you were worthless? Or a burden or whatever?"

Sam snorted. "Dean," he said, and then stopped. Shook his head, minutely. "Yeah, okay, sure. It's not like-" Sam stopped. That was smart of him, because if that sentence was going to end the way Dean thought it was going to (_not like it was anything I didn't already know) _then he was seriously not going to hold back from punching Sam in the face. "Yeah," he said, finally, quieter. "Sometimes."

"But that wasn't what got to you. So what did?" Sam's mouth did a funny little twist. "Christ, Sam," Dean said, voice rising a few notches. "What do you think I'm going to do, throw you out on your ass? Break down sobbing? Maybe this year's been shit but I'm still kicking, dammit."

Sam sighed, and his chin dropped downward along with his eyelids. "You have to understand," he said, after a moment's pause. "It's not that…I knew it wasn't real. But it sounded true. And I should have-"

"You're not answering the question."

Sam opened his mouth and then closed it. He slid into the car. "No," he said. "I'm not," and his eyes fixed out the window, and Dean knew Sam closing him out when he saw it.

~.~

Neither of them were sleeping. Both of them were pretending to. The motel was uncomfortable and too hot even with the fan going full tilt, creaking all the while.

"The thing is," Sam said, and he made a hoarse sound that it took Dean a moment to recognize as a laugh. "He wasn't wrong. About…any of it, really. You know he promised once never to lie to me. He never did. Not once. So that's how I know…"

"Sam," Dean said, and couldn't keep the sharp note out of his voice. "You know it wasn't really-"

It clicked in his brain, rather horribly. He could see Sam's eyes gleaming where he stared at the ceiling. It hadn't been Lucifer, not really. It'd been a manifestation of Sam's fucking fucked up subconscious, and that made it _better, _of _course, _because that meant it wasn't the devil saying this shit to his little brother, just _Sam._Which should have been obvious all along, but he'd just never thought-

Lucifer had always been something else. Something _other _that he could fight, and even after all this time it still hurt to understand all over again that Sam's worst enemy was and always would be fucking _Sam._

Sam still wasn't looking at him. "God," Dean said, and it came out strangled, like someone was closing a fist around his throat or his heart and he _knew _what that felt like. "God, Sam-" He wanted to – didn't even know. Wanted to grab Sam and tuck his head under his chin like Sam was still four. Wanted to tell Sam it was okay and would be better in the morning.

"I don't want to hurt you," Sam said, and his voice had gone suddenly small, but still calm. So _calm_. "Sometimes it's like I don't know how to stop, though. I know…you can't fix me, Dean. Maybe I can fix me, eventually. But you can't make it your fault or expect yourself to work miracles. I'm – fucked up, and I know that, and I have to deal with that on my own."

_No, _Dean desperately wanted to say, _that's not true, I can help, goddammit I can-_

"My crazy's not your responsibility, Dean," Sam went on, almost soothingly.

Dean finally managed to find his voice. "Yeah," he said, hoarsely, "It kind of is."

Sam's head finally turned and his younger brother looked at him, eyes gleaming in the dark. "Dean-"

"Goddammit, Sam," Dean said, and there was the anger he'd been desperately reaching for, suddenly right within his reach. "You're mine. And you don't get to take that away from me. You don't get to decide that you're not my problem. You don't – I'm your _big brother _and you do _not _get to take that from me, do you _hear me?_"

Silence.

"_Sam._"

"Dean," Sam said, voice slightly strange and muffled. "I'll kill you in the end. Somehow or other I'll be the thing that-"

"And so what," Dean said. Sam blinked owlishly at him. "So what?" Dean said again. "Of course you'll be the death of me. Or I'll be the death of you, or we'll be the death of each other, and at this point is it _honestly _going to be anything else?" He flung the sheets off and stood up, muscles humming with energy. "Listen, just – if I were hurt and we needed to get somewhere, you'd let me lean on you, right?"

Dean could hear the sheets rustle as Sam sat up. "Yeah, of course, but-"

"So let me return the favor, okay? You've got all this shit in your head, and you can't…you're not going to break me with it. Please, just…can you trust me to know that?"

Sam took a hitching, shuddering breath. "He said I ruined everything I'd ever touched," Sam said, finally, the words falling like stones into the humidity between them. Dean glanced over and found his brother staring fixedly up at the ceiling, hands folded on his stomach. "Jess and Dad and you most of all. That you'd never have gone to Hell if it weren't for me." The words were spilling out him like vomit, coming faster with every syllable. "He said the best thing I could do for you was to end it before you felt like you had to. That I wasn't enough to keep you alive and I never would be. That I was a freak and a disgrace and there was nothing I could ever do to make up for everything so I'd come back to him before long anyway-" Sam's voice cracked and then broke entirely. Dean felt for a moment like he couldn't breathe, felt frozen in place.

He forced himself to speak. "Hey," he said, and turned toward the bed where Sam was sitting, body bent forward. "You're wrong."

"No," Sam said, and it looked like he was rocking, ever so slightly. "I'm not. That's the…that's the thing."

Dean ran a hand through his hair, trying to… "Sam," he said, carefully. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes." Part of Dean was stupidly relieved that that'd come as quickly as it had.

"Then trust me that you're wrong," Dean said, slowly. "That you don't see everything, and that I'm your big brother and always right."

Sam shuddered, minutely. Dean could hear him breathing slightly raggedly, and he moved to sit on the bed next to Sam, reached out tentatively at first and then dragged him into a hug, Sam's stupid hair tickling his nose. "C'mere," he said, his own voice going rough. "Hey, kid. You believed in me when no one else did. Even me." Sam was warm and smelled like soap and shampoo and faintly of sweat. One of his hands came up and knotted in Dean's shirt. "Let me do that for you."

Sam's shoulders shuddered again, more violently this time. Dean felt it through his whole body. "You don't have to take care of me," he said, a note of something like desperation in the muffled voice against Dean's shoulder. "You don't need to-"

"I know I don't need to," Dean said quietly. "So just let me, okay?"

Sam sagged, the tension flooding out of him in a rush. "I want to believe you," Sam said, so quietly he could barely hear it. "I really want to but it's just – it's been so long. So _long, _and I still don't really know-"

"Hey," Dean said. "It's okay." It wasn't, but Sam quieted. His shoulders shook once more, and Dean though he could feel his shoulder becoming damp. Someday, he thought, glancing up at the ceiling, someone had better pay for all of this. _All of it. _"It's okay," He said again. "We can go from there."


End file.
